The Åland Islands´ Emigrant Institute Society Call for papersNewsletter October 2004 Newsletter November 2003 Newsletter December 2002 Newsletter December 2007 CALL FOR PAPERS - NAHA-NORWAY The ninth seminar of the Norwegian-American Historical Association, Norway Chapter,
entitled "Migration and Memory: Norwegian-American Dimensions" will be held on
June 21-23, 2006, at the Department of the Humanities and Cultural Studies, Telemark
University College, Bø i Telemark, Norway. As its theme title suggests, the seminar
organizers welcome a wide range of topics within Norwegian-American studies. We are
particularly interested in papers on subjects related to emigration / immigration and
the construction of memory. October 2003 Dear Members,
Now definitely summer is gone! In fact this year it never even arrived!
Next weekend it will be time to switch over to winter time, which means
being able to sleep for one more hour in the morning. But on the other hand
in the afternoon it will be even darker than now! Anyway to brighten up
your days over there here comes a newsletter for our American members
from the Åland Islands and The Emigrant Institute!
November 2003
Dear Members,
The Åland Islands’ Emigrant Institute is now open daily from 12 noon
until 4 p.m. from June 7th through Aug. 10th ,
making it possible to visit and view the small exhibition even on weekends
duringt the summer months. The student Marielle Fellman receives visitors
on Saturdays and Sundays whereas the project leader Eva Meyer is in charge
during the weekdays.
Now you can read the latest
membership reports.
Feel free to ask questions or
write your opinion about our website in our guest book.
We are a
bit crowded at our Institute right now as through June and July we have
engaged the highschool student Minna Nunez-Garces for a research project
to explore the after effects of the rather large emigration from the Åland
community of Finby in Sund, and what the returned emigrants ment for their
local villages in form of finance, material, building technique and tools. We are planning a fall emigrant exhibition
in Hammarland – but more about that later!
Subscription on Ancestry.com Membership excursion to the
town of Hangö The Emigrants’ Day The annual meeting of the
Åland Islands’ Emigrant Institute was held on Apr. 27th
at 2 p.m. in the film hall of the Åland Museum. Our president Erik Lindholm
was unanimously re-elected for another term.
Best Regards, December 2002 Dear Members,Soon Christmas is here and along with all the hurry there are some news coming from The Åland Islands and The Emigrant Institute. It has been a vivid summer and autumn season with many visitors not only from the Åland Islands but also from the Finnish mainland, Sweden and from many other countries. From the USA there have been many American Ålandic descendants coming to see the country of their ancestors. Very many of them have been so nice to take the time for giving an interview to The Emigrant Institute about their ancestors and so the knowledge of the Ålanders in the USA has grown a lot. Thanks very much to all of you! This year, too, the Institute has received a lot of fine donations that help to shed light on the Ålandic emigration and that we are very thankful of. We have also borrowed nice photographs from many persons and have copied them for the archives of The Emigrant Institute. "The Emigrants' Day" As usually we've celebrated "The Emigrants' Day" this summer, on August 25th. It was a warm and lovely summer Sunday afternoon. In spite of that almost 60 persons had turned up. Our special guest this time was Marianne Forsblad from The Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle who made an interesting and excellent speach about the emigration from the Nordic countries to the town of Seattle and the surrounding regions. The exhibition "Scandinavian Roots - American Lives" For three weeks in September - October we got the opportunity to show the exhibition "Scandi-navian Roots - American Lives" (www.migrationinstitute.fi/nordic ) in the Åland Museum. It consists of eleven screens telling about the emigration from the Scandinavian countries into the USA and also has a very informative catalogue. In connection we also showed some of the objects of the Emigrant Institute. One day we hope to have pictures from the exhibition put onto the Internet so that anyone can take part of what was exposed. At the opening two researchers from Sweden came to give a presentation of the CD-Rom "The Emigrant" and showed different ways to look up emigrants. They also told us - a fact we in between had become familiar with - that quite a lot of the emigrants from Finland, and thus also from the Åland Islands, are missing on this CD-Rom. One of our very helpful members and a skilful genealogist, Ingemar Ekman in Stockholm is trying to find out where some of the records containing mainly people from Finland are being kept today. We hope he will be successful in his research work! The last day of the exhibition a lady working at the museum of Hangö, a small town on the peninsula in the southwestern corner of the Finnish mainland, came to tell us about the emigration through the harbour of Hangö. It was this way most emigrants from the mainland left Finland, but also many Ålanders until the year 1915 when The Swedish American Line was founded and started out from Gothenburg (see www.migrationinstitute.fi and Passenger and/or Passport Lists). We were told that both the hotel where the emigrants stayed over night before leaving and the embarking quay for the ship for Hull are still preserved in the town of Hangö. - Anybody who happens to be in Hangö on a summer Thursday should not forget to take part in a guided tour on foot to visit the places the emigrants passed before leaving their country. Now from December till the middle of February the screens are shown in the library of Föglö, to the south of the main Åland Island, together with a special exhibition of emigrants from there. In February till March the screens will continue to Finström and in April they will be exposed in Eckerö. For both places a special exhibition will be planned as well. Greetings from Stavanger in Norway The last weekend in September it was again time for the Annual Meeting of AEMI (The Associa-tion of European Migration Institutions), this time in Stavanger, a beautiful town in the westernmost part of Norway. It was from this town that the emigration from Norway started as early as 1825! In proportion to the whole population in all the Scandinavian countries the emigration from Norway was the largest of all, with 860.000 persons leaving for the USA! - The topic of the meeting this year was "The Return Migration" dealing with what the returning emigrants brought with them mentally, new knowledge, contacts and new ways of thinking, materially, new tools and equipment and in many cases also an amount of money to start something new with. To think how these returning emigrants contributed to the development of their home countries in many different way! Very fascinating and worth studying! A new cooperation project with the Åland Vocational School At the beginning of December we started a new cooperation project with one of the classes at the Åland Vocational School, this time dealing with the emigration to Australia and New Zealand. It turned out that there was very little material in the school books about these countries so we decided to tell the students to gather information for a manual for coming classes to study. The students will also interview two elder Ålandic gentlemen who during the World War II had to stay in New Zealand and Australia together with the crew of their ship and then stayed there for some 10-15 years, and also an Ålandic family that emigrated in the 1970's and returned in the late 80's. - The cooperation project was started by an introductory lecture given by the director of The Migration Institute in Åbo, Prof. Olavi Koivukangas, who has dedicated many years of his life to researching the emigration from Finland and Scandinavia to this part of the world. A dissertation to look forward to! Next year the doctor's dissertation of our former coordinator at the Emigrant Institute Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch, whom many Ålandic emigrants and descendants of Ålandic emigrants have met and helped by giving an interview during her field works in the USA, will be presented at the Swedish university, the Academy of Åbo. This autumn she has given in her manuscript to her professor for a first check and for further comments. I'll keep you informed about this very exciting and interesting matter and I'm quite sure all of us wish her the very best success and luck in her further work on her dissertation and for her Ph.D.! The membership fee For those who would like to renew the membership for the year 2003 or would like to join The Åland Islands' Emigrant Institute Society, the membership fee for next year is 10 euro. The fee can be paid directly to the account of the Institute in the Ålandsbanken in Mariehamn or by sending a cheque by the end of January 2003. - If someone would find it practical to pay e.g. for two or three years at the same time, that's also okay, and I'll make a note about that. By these news from the Institute I'll close by wishing all of you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2003! - Let's keep in touch! Best Regards, Eva Meyer / The Åland Islands' Emigrant Institute coordinator To top
The Åland Islands' Emigrant Institute
The year 2006 and the ongoing 2007 Dear Members,
Such a long, long time has
passed since you last heard from the Åland Islands’ Emigrant
Institute that you must already have been wondering what the Institute
is doing these days. Luckily enough I have the pleasure to announce
that, indeed, we are doing fine though, through the past years, there
has been some big changes for us. New
Premises for the Emigrant Institute The year 2005 brought us bad news as, at the Emigrant Institute, we were informed that by the end of the summer all activities in the white house at Ålandsvägen 48 had to move out. The house owner himself and his family were themselves going to move into the house. In the beginning it turned out to be very hard to find suitable, new premises for the Institute and we were looking all over Mariehamn. But in the end we were lucky to become a nice room to rent, about the same size we had before, just a little bigger and with very handy cupboards where one can hide almost anything! By the end of 2005 we had moved into the new premises in the house that used to be the office of the sea captain and ship owner Gustaf Erikson, who had the biggest sailing vessel fleet in the world up to a few years after World War II, sailing all the way to Australia to fetch grain. In a way the Emigrant Institute is now hosted in the house where many young men started out for the journey that made them emigrants, if, on their way, they decided to jump ship and stay somewhere out in the world or if local depressions made it impossible to get a cargo, which meant the ship would not return to Åland for a very long time. The inauguration of the new
Emigrant premises was held on Febr. 22, 2006 after a hectic period of
finishing the arranging of the exhibition. The party was very nice
and crowded with quite a number of guests showing up in our, after
all, not too big premises. The local newspapers wrote about the Grand
Re-opening of the Institute and even the Speaker of the Åland
Parliament and the Mayor of the town of Mariehamn were present. And we
felt very honoured on behalf of our Institute! Hjördis
Sundblom’s Book in English The year 2005 brought
pleasant news, too, to us as Hjördis Sundblom’s book about her
emigrant life, finally, was released just before Christmas. The book
got the English title ”My
Name is Sunny Now. A Scandinavian Emigrant’s Story”. Before
printing it we wished to have the book proofread by an English native
speaking person. We were very lucky to get help from a most helpful
lady, Mrs. Jo Ann Troberg from Pennsylvania, USA, and spending all her
summers together with her husband in Åland. Mrs. Troberg all
unselfishly offered to do the proofreading and made a great job to
help us bring the book project to a happy end. The book release was
the first great happening in our new premises, and we were very
pleased to start our stay in the new place with such a great event. Just like the Swedish
edition the English one now has become a great success! I guess it is
because so many people have emigrant forefathers and relatives and
so few of them have told about how it was to be a young person, often
17 to 20 years of age, leaving home for an uncertain future in a
totally unknown world. In her book Hjördis Sundblom tells very
straightforward about the difficulties she had to overcome, the new
manners she had to learn as well as the jobs, she wanted to do, and
the English language. It is a most touching lifestory and she really
succeeds in appealing to her readers as she lets us look into how it
was to go through this enormous change in life with all the feelings
of uncertainty, scare and unsecurity she must have felt coming from
Föglö, Åland, and landing in New York with all its new demands and
challenges. Like all the best things in
life this book is not that easy to get hold of! To facilitate the
acquisition we have made an agreement with the bookstore Lisco in
Mariehamn that the book can be ordered there by fax, phone or by
e-mail. On our homepage (See www.eminst.net, News & Info, “How to order...” a little down
the page!) there are more instructions how to order the book. And if
you’d like to have a personal greeting from the author herself
don’t forget to mention about that when ordering. Every now and
then Hjördis tells me she has been to the Lisco bookstore to sign a
book for someone who has asked for it. The Emigrants’ Day of 2006 The ”Emigrants’ Day”
2006 was celebrated in Degerby, in the community of Föglö on August
6. The main speaker was a young Åland descendent, David Jansson,
professor of Geography at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York.
He told us about his grandparents who left for New York, got married
and had their family growing up there. David gave his speech all in
Swedish (!), and it was a most humorous, interesting as well as
philosophical speech on family ties and questions of origin and
identity. We also had the pleasure of listening
to a young rising star and Föglö musician, Andreas Nyberg, who
played a couple of traditional Föglö songs for us on his violin
and told the history behind each of them. Very nice!!! We all agreed
that last year’s “Emigrants’ Days”, again, was one of the very nicest we
have spent through the years. ..... ...
and
The Emigrants’ Day of 2007 - with an Emigration Stamp! And now, again, we are
heading for “The Emigrants’ Day” of 2007 that will take place on August 9. On this very day the Åland Post
is going to release a stamp in honour of the Åland emigrants,
featuring the Åland artist and professor of art Ture Bengtz
(1907-1973). He grew up in Jomala, Åland, but spent most of his life
in Boston, Mass., where he got the opportunity to study at The
Boston Museum of Fine Arts School. Later in his life he would also
give lectures there himself. This year’s event will
take place at the museum of art, at The Önningeby Museum in the
village of Önningeby, Jomala, Åland (see www.goaland.net/en/onningebymuseum
). At the museum there is an exhibition in memory of Ture Bengtz and
his work of art all through the summer. At “The Emigrants’ Day”
the museum director Kjell Ekström will give us a presentation of the
artist and the exhibition. And there will be the possibility of
purchasing the brand new emigration stamp during the ongoing
“Emigrants’ Day”, in fact all through the day of Aug. 9. I must
make sure to get this letter going to all our members and friends
abroad by then. This year’s “Emigrants’ Day” will be the 10th
to be celebrated and it certainly is going to be a great party! New research fields New challenges lie ahead,
as a new research project on Åland emigrants to Sweden all since
World War II will be started in the autumn of 2007. We are very happy
about this new project, especially as the two researchers involved
are Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch, Ph.Dr and the first coordinator of
the Emigrant Institute, as you certainly remember, and the above
mentioned David Jansson, Prof. of Geography, who will now move to
Uppsala in Sweden to be closer to his research field. I myself met David for the
first time as he together with his family came to Åland on his first
visit only six years ago. Since then we have had the joy and honour of
having him for a visit almost twice a year, in summer, and in
winter time, an event as much awaited as the arrival of Santa Claus! I
can’t tell you how he has coped with it, but during these few years
and without too many chances of getting practice David has managed
to learn Swedish excellently! I guess today there are not many topics
he couldn’t follow and discuss in Swedish, which is very impressive,
indeed! We are sure the project
will contribute to the research on modern emigration as well as on
today’s social matter of young people moving away from Åland.
Here we will certainly be able to see the parallel to what was
vividly discussed about a hundred years ago when so many young persons
went off for America. - I’ll keep you informed about how the work is
developping. The Emigrant Database on the Internet To tell from the number of
visitors on the English home page of the Emigrant Institute you have
certainly all noticed the Åland Emigrant Database, which was released
in the winter of 2006. Hopefully it has been of good help for your
research! At the moment the work on the database is not proceeding as
for the last year it has been very hard to find funds for continuing
the work. Little by little, though, some new names have come up as on
the home page there is a form to fill in and send information to the
Emigrant Institute about Åland emigrants who are not yet to be found
in the database. Some people have already found the form and have been
so kind as to send us emigrant information that we have been able to
add into the database. Of course, we would also very much appreciate
more information about emigrants already in the database if somebody
happens to recognize and know more about some specific person than
what is now in there. Also we would be very grateful to receive
information about emigrants we don’t have any information about from
before, but whom you might know about. Please, visit our homepage,
then click on “Emigrant Database” and fill in “the form” and
send it to us. We would also appreciate very much, if below
“Notes” you would add some contact information, e.g. an e-mail
address or an ordinary address just in case there would be some
questions we would like to ask. This contact information will by no
means be published in the database, only to be used for questions that
may arise. – A warm thank you for your kind assistance!!! – But!
At this very moment the form has temporarily been closed as right now
it has started to attract a lot of nonsens answers. Our webmaster is
investigating the matter, and hopefully after a while he will find a
solution and get it working properly again. An
Exhibition about Swedish Finns in St Petersburg and in the Russian
Empire As the town of St Petersburg celebrated its 300th
anniversary in 2003 the Swedish-Russian Society of Finland made an
interesting exhibition about some thirteen Swedish Finns who made themselves
a career in St Petersburg during the time of the Grand Duchy of
Finland, a time that lasted up to 1917. This exhibition had its
opening during the festivities of St Petersburg, and then made a tour
to some other towns in Russia. Later on it has been touring in
Finland, and finally we had the chance to borrow it for exhibiting it
on Åland in Febr.-March 2007. But, as we figured out, in order to
draw more attention to the exhibition, it would be a good idea to have
some Ålanders presented as well. Thus started the great search for Ålanders
who went to seek their fortune in the Russian Empire during this time.
And indeed, we were overwhelmed by the result! In fact, it turned out
not to be too hard a task to find Ålanders who went to St Petersburg
to get trained in different trades, as military officers or as
teachers. But, thanks to Maria Jarlsdotter Enckell MFA, the project
leader of the Sitka Godenhjelm Rescue Project, we also learned about
Ålanders who made a career in the North Pacific region, and in the
Russian Alaska. And what exciting lives we found out about! Seamen,
whalers, gold diggers, admirals, explorers... Hard to believe all this
happened in the mid 1800’s! Now we hope to have this exhibition translated into
English, as we plan to print a catalogue and perhaps send the
exhibition out in the world. Hopefully it would be of interest in the
US as some of it deals with the history of Alaska during the Russian
period up to 1867. Let’s see what will turn up! On the website of the Åland Museum, where our
exhibition was on display until March 11 2007, there is a slideshow
that gives you an impression of what it looked like. On the following
web address you can find it: http://www.museum.ax/museum/galleri/emigrant/indexemigranter.html
. A
Christmas stamp and a Christmas exhibition There will be one more exciting Åland stamp release
this year. It will take place in fall, on Oct. 9, 2007. The Åland
Post will make this year’s Christmas mail even nicer than ususally
to send as the stamp is going to feature a picture of Santa Claus
painted in 1961 for the Coca-Cola Co. by the advertisement artist and
Åland descendent Haddon Sundblom. The appearance most of us
associate with Santa Claus today is due to the pictures Haddon
Sundblom painted for Coca-Cola for more than 30 years starting in
1931. One can claim that he, indeed, made a longlasting impact on
the Christmas traditions of today. Now the Åland Post has got the permission to make a
stamp featuring one of these beloved Santa pictures! In addition to
the release on Oct. 9 the
Emigrant Institute will arrange some programme. Later on in autumn
and early winter we will arrange a Christmas exhibition telling about
Haddon Sundblom and his Santa Claus. The exhibition will be a
cooperation with the Åland museum, and the opening will be in the
museum premises on Nov. 22. At the moment we are collecting
information about the subject and, strangely enough, people are
wondering when they see me reading books about Christmas traditions
already in August and July! Gravestones
in the Lemland cemetery On the website of The Genealogical Society of Finland (www.genealogia.fi
)there is a section of cemeteries showing pictures of gravestones and
names of the deceased. If you click on “Finnish cemeteries” to the
left you’ll land on a site with two boxes, one for family names and
one for given names. Right at the bottom there are some Åland
cemeteries, with all or some of the gravestones of the cemetery of
Kumlinge, Kökar, Saltvik, Sottunga and Sund. I cannot tell you who
took the pictures on these cemeteries as I’ve just found them there
on the website. Concerning the Lemland cemetery I can tell you that
one of our members, Einar Lindholm, and I spent some chilly afternoons
taking photographs and making notes of names and dates out there last
autumn. I’m still typing the information into a file for the
Internet, and after some time –I can’t tell you yet how long it
will take... – the pictures will be available on the website. I hope
it will be of interest for you, or at least for those who have family
roots in Lemland. Finally, a big excuse for not letting you hear
from us for such a long time! And a promise not to let something like
this happen again!!! We’ll stay in touch! Our kindest regards to all of you, Eva Meyer The Åland Islands’ Emigrant Institute Norra Esplanadgatan 5
ph. +358-(0)18-13325 (12 to 4 p.m.) AX-22100
e-mail: emi.inst@aland.net Åland,
Finland
www.eminst.net
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